ITH THE REASSERTION of the monopoly of the Democratic Party over Maryland politics which for the previous four years had been what amounted to a party-and-a-half system, the jurisdiction jokingly referred to as "the Free State" is well on its way to becoming a socialist nightmare where only the hyper-rich or the fashionably impoverished having suppressed their own dignity to enjoy a life of entitlement program luxury will be able to eke out an existence there.

In my column "People's Republic Of Maryland Taxing Its Subjects Into Submission", I wrote about plans to enact legislation that will end up costing motorists about $2000 more just to purchase an automobile so that new vehicles in the state will be in compliance with California emission standards Now plans are being announced to sock residents even harder in the gut all in the name of protecting the environment.

According to the Green Fund Proposal, developers would be accessed a fee of $0.25 per square foot for any impervious surface that water cannot percolate through such as a roof or driveway. And the fee can go up as high as $2.00 per square foot for structures built outside of designated growth areas. Theoretically those in the market for a new home could be levied a fee as high as $20,000 according to a Match 6, 2007 Maryland Daily Record article titled "Debate Heats Up Over Green Fund Fee". One does not have to hold an endowed professorship in Economics to realize that developers are not going to absorb this fee out of their own sense of philanthropy but rather pass it along to homebuyers.

Those favoring this kind of nonsense locked away in their gated communities or on their palatial estates will condescendingly snort that, even if the fee is as high as $20,000, it is a small price to pay for environmental restoration (the latest bureaucratic euphemism for spending increases as the monies will go to pay farmers to plant winter cover crops and to further bloat agencies such as the state departments of agriculture and the environment). Of course, it might not seem so much when you make in a week what the average person makes in a year but it is a significant chunk of change when you are saddled with a 30 year mortgage on a house pushing nearly $500,000.

With taxes in some Maryland counties pushing $3000 a year and projected to go as high as $6000 by 2010, one must ask what in Sheol's nomenclature is being done with all that money. Isn't it about time tax revenue went for actual needs such as this alleged crisis of restoring the Chesapeake Bay rather than for things that should be private sector expenses such as "Shakespeare In The Park" festivals paid for from funds provided by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the City of Hyattsville, and the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation (all entities having the same people unfortunate enough to reside in their respective jurisdictions) and African vacations euphemistically categorized as "trade missions" for petty yet self-important local officials that in the end are about transferring still more resources out of the United States into the hands of deceitful bureaucrats and even more maniacal tyrants.

There is more of course to the exorbitant extraction of revenue to fund questionable government programs or even to transfer resources from those deemed by the elite to have to those alleged to have not. For whenever social engineers invoke what they have labeled the lofty goal of income redistribution, is has nothing whatsoever to do about elevating the downtrodden but about dragging the average American down to that level of destitution.

Though they need to stop and think who will be left to do their menial labor for them unless the next phase of their grandiose development plans include massive relocation camps where laborers will be imported from abroad and warehoused sight unseen away from the lords of the new order like human livestock and beasts of burden, those once considered parts of the working and lower middle classes will find virtually no place in the brave new Maryland on the drawing board. For example, in Hyattsville, Maryland planners are conniving to shed the municipality's image as a suburban haven just outside Washington, DC for blue collar tradesmen and low level government functionaries to that of a hovel for artists (with government subsidized housing for those types insisting upon smearing elephant dung on portraits of the Virgin Mary, submerging crosses in jars of urine, or other assorted blasphemies and obscenities that would not otherwise find support in a free marketplace and claiming its fine art) and cramped townhouses pushing half a million dollars for the uppercrust that get a buzz living in squalor sheek all the rage these days among the effete.

Communist revolutions around the world came into power promising to create a classless society. However, what they put into place was a system where all but a tiny elite were suppressed equally. Back then, such regimes accomplished their diabolical agendas through violence and fear.

For the moment, the ideological heirs of those that believe the flames of liberty must be extinguished and the aspirations of the individual curtailed for the alleged good of humanity have grown more sophisticated in their methods of getting the people to comply with their agenda. However, as Americans draw ever closer to the breaking point of just how much they are willing to put up with as frankly we are fast approaching the threshold where there is precious little left for the state to steal, we must ask with concern will the aspiring despots among us resort to the violent tendencies of their philosophical progenitors in the attempt to bring about socialism's ultimate triumph.Frederick Meekins is an Internet columnist. He holds a BS from the University of Maryland in Political Science/History and a MA in Apologetics & Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Practical Theology through the Master's Graduate School Of Divinity in Evansville, Indiana. Frederick's research interests include Worldview Application, Christian Apologetics, The Implications of Aberrant Theologies & Ideologies, Futurology, Eschatology, Science Fiction, Terrorism Studies, Environmentalism, Education Policy and America's Judeo-Christian Foundations. Frederick is also an ordained Non-Denominational Minister and listed in "Who's Who In America" and in "Who's Who Of Emerging Leaders". Media inquiries can be directed to: americanworldview@hotmail.com. His books "Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors" and "Provide For The Common Defense: Thoughts Concerning The Nation's Enemies" are available at http://stores.lulu.com/fmeekins. His blog, The Epistolizer, can be found at http://epistolizer.blogspot.com